Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attends a meeting in Moscow, on Feb. 25.RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY/Reuters
Russia’s foreign minister says that Moscow is ready for talks to end the fighting in Ukraine but will continue to press its effort to destroy Ukraine’s military infrastructure.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the Russian delegation submitted its demands to Ukrainian negotiators earlier this week and is now waiting for Kyiv’s response in talks set for Thursday.
Lavrov said that the West has continuously armed Ukraine, trained its troops and built up bases there to turn Ukraine into a bulwark against Russia.
Russia says that made Ukraine a threat to its security, forcing it to act.
The U.S. and its allies have insisted that NATO is a defensive alliance that doesn’t pose a threat to Russia.
Lavrov strongly rejected that, saying that the West has turned Ukraine into a “bridgehead for undermining everything that is Russian.”
Lavrov also said on Thursday that Moscow would press on with its military operation in Ukraine until “the end,” and that Russia had no thoughts of nuclear war.
Offering no evidence to back up his remarks in an interview with state television, a week after Russian invaded Ukraine, he also accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, an ethnic Jew, of presiding over “a society where Nazism is flourishing.”
He said he had no doubt that a solution to the crisis in Ukraine would be found, and a new round of talks were about to start between Ukrainian and Russian officials.
But he said Russia’s dialogue with the West must be based on mutual respect, accused NATO of seeking to maintain supremacy and said that while Russia had a lot of goodwill, it could not let anyone undermine its interests.
“The thought of nuclear is constantly spinning in the heads of Western politicians but not in the heads of Russians,” he said. “I assure you that we will not allow any kind of provocation to unbalance us.”
Russia did not feel politically isolated, and the question of how Ukraine lives should be defined by its people, he said.
Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of hitting civilian areas but Lavrov said Russian troops had strict orders to use high-precision weapons to destroy military infrastructure.
Offering no evidence, Lavrov said Russia had information that the United States was worried about the prospect of losing control over what he described as chemical and biological laboratories in Ukraine and accused Britain of building military bases there.
With files from Reuters.
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